One shortcoming of conventional star feeders is that large-volume agglomerates that are fed in at the inlet connection cannot be introduced into the star wheel chamber because of their volume. The prior art therefore provides star feeders having so-called shredding inserts, which are generally installed in the inlet connection on the inlet side of the star wheel housing.
The agglomerates fed into the star feeder are pressed by the motion of the star wheel into the cutting blade or cutting inserts which are disposed in the inlet connection and are thereby comminuted.
A drawback of these known comminution methods is, however, that with increasing operating time, particularly in the use of detachable cutting inserts, the fastening thereof works loose and has to be readjusted. In an extreme case, the fastening may come loose during operation and the cutting blade may fall into the star wheel chamber, resulting in the destruction of the star feeder.
In the case of some known cutting inserts, the cutting edges wear down, whereby metal particles are undesirably carried into the comminuted material and these cutting inserts must from time to time be replaced.